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With a sterling cast, this enthralling thriller delves into the mathematics behind betting and high risk behaviour, while highlighting the psychology of temptation and greed, through the events in the lives of a genius and his students.

Storyline

This extraordinary, offbeat thriller begins with Venkat Subhramaniam (Amitabh Bachchan), an Indian professor of mathematics, software engineering, and a genius, teaching mathematics in his village to kids when a postman comes with a letter. The letter is from British mathematician Perci Trachtenberg (Ben Kingsley), widely regarded as the world's greatest living mathematician, who invites Venkat to a high rolling casino in London.

Venkat tells Perci about an equation that could not only change the dialogue on mathematics forever, but one that has already left an indelible impression of guilt — for many painful reasons — on Venkat's life. It is shown in the past that the reclusive genius Venkat has cracked a theory that could redefine the principles of probability and randomness. Venkat tries to use this experiment in a game called Teen Patti, (a poker game) which he plays on the Internet.

According to this experiment if a person playing Teen Patti knows the three cards with one of the players (except him) he/she can guess the other cards with the rest of the players and therefore can guess who is going to win with the theory of probability.

Venkat succeeds on his theory and submits his report to the institute where he teaches, but they reject his report. Venkat is sure about his theory and wants to try out in reality with live players. So he talks with younger professor Shantanu (R. Madhavan) about his theory and tells him to get three students to try out this experiment. Shantanu arranges three students — Sid (Siddharth Kher), the college rockstar; Aparna or Apu Shraddha Kapoor, the studious geek who has a crush on Sid' and Vikram or Vikku (Dhruv Ganesh), the boy next door.

They come together and start playing the game. Venkat's theory, like the last time, proves to be successful. Venkat says that after a few more games he'll be sure to crack his equation and even be able to study it better. Shantanu tells him that he should try using his theory in the real world, where there are people who actually gamble and play Teen Patti, i.e., in underground dens or 'addas'.

Although Venkat has no interest in the money that could come from practicing his equation to crack Teen Patti, he eventually succumbs to Shantanu's charismatic persuasion. Soon, with the help of his new students, they explore the addas of wild Bombay.

Later another student from the institute, Abbas (Vaibhav Talwar), the rich spoiled brat joins the gang and arranges for them parties in casinos, private clubs, etc. But what starts out as an experiment between a charismatic young professor and an eccentric older one soon descends into a game neither of them can control.

The money they earn gets stolen; someone is blackmailing them; they get greedy about money and, in the course of time, they change into different people and even start betraying each other.

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Did you know? In having many cameo appearance by key actors, the director responded that there was relevance of the cameos and they all come into different situations and different games. Each of the actors has an impact on the plot and hasn't been added on just to make the film look bigger. The characters act as a ladder which lead the the story to the climax. Read More

Production Designer Ayesha Punvani created gambling dens in places like abandoned train yards, dockyards, abandoned factories, mills that have been shut down, and an ice factory.

The director took 2 years to finalize the script with her co-writer Shivkumar Subramaniam.

Amitabh Bachchan had the entire climax re-written, as he felt that it revolved around the younger leads and not on him. He asked the makers to rewrite his role.

Arshad Warsi was attached to the film, but as the shooting dates had changed and Arshad was unable to accommodate them he was replaced with R Madhavan.

In having many cameo appearance by key actors, the director responded that there was relevance of the cameos and they all come into different situations and different games. Each of the actors has an impact on the plot and hasn't been added on just to make the film look bigger. The characters act as a ladder which lead the the story to the climax.

Ever since Gandhi, Ben Kingsley wanted to feature in a Hindi film. It took him 27 years for this to happen with this film.

Ben Kingsley was added to the movie cast late on. Amitabh Bachchan's character is meant to be a genius at maths who looks up to someone as the ultimate genius. Even though this character was in the script the actor was not finalized. Keeping Mr Bachchan's stature in mind, it had to be somebody that had a very strong screen presence and it had to be a brilliant actor. The first actor that came to the director's mind was Kingsley. The producer approached him, and he really liked the script so agreed to be a part of it.

When the director was asked about the similarity of her movie to 21 (2008), she responded her script was written before 21. The director did admit her script was inspired by the real life incident of the MIT Blackjack Team upon which the 21 was also based on.

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